The Choice

By Putu Arya Tirthawirya

"I'd be better off dead," the old, almost ancient, woman moaned. With no blouse to cover her breasts -- but then she never had been comfortable with such an encumbrance -- she sat on the edge of her sleeping platform, one leg resting on top of the other, her wrinkled legs stretched out before her. The thatched- palm mats that covered the platform on which she sat, while far from new, were very clean. And though the cotton sarong she wore was one whose colors were hopelessly faded, she actually owned many others, new ones in fact which were neatly-folded by her own hand and kept in a small bureau free from the smell of mothballs. A rough-spun stagen, a cinch for her sarong, encircled her waist.

The old woman paused momentarily in her pounding of a wad of betel-nut mix in the metal mortar and stared at the wall of her room, black with soot from her chimney-less lantern. Her eyelids fluttered slowly over her clouded eyes. Another long sigh rode the wave of her drawn out breath.

"Dear gods, why have you placed such a heavy burden upon me?" she whispered almost inaudibly. That night this toothless old woman had to make a decision. At the close of the Six-Month ceremony that was to be held tomorrow in honor of one of her great-grandchildren, a grandchild would come to her bearing the edible remains of the ritual offering.

Tonight, therefore, she had to make a decision: to accept or to refuse the offerings. Yes, one of two choices. She had two daughters, both of whom were already married and with grandchildren of their own. Whose interests was she to favor? Gusti Ayu Raka, her eldest daughter had eleven children, five of whom were already married and with children of their own. Raka's husband was of the same blood-line as her late husband.

Then there was Gusti Ayu Rai, the younger daughter, who had six children, three of whom were married and with children of their own. Her husband was from her own blood-line. At the time of her marriage these two blood-lines had been dissolved as separate entities to become one whole and her house, along with the grounds that surrounded it, now represented the "status quo," sitting squarely as it did between the two families' houses.

Together, the trio of houses formed the symbolic shape of a winged bird with her home being the body, from the bird's head to its tail, and Rai's home to the west, and Raka's home to the east, being the bird's two wings.

Frequently ill due to her age, the old woman didn't know how to relieve herself of the mental strain that had resulted from the rising tension between her two daughters' houses. Ever since it was announced that one of Gusti Ayu Rai's sons was to hold a large Six-Month ceremony for his first-born, complete with a whole roast pig, relations between the two families had been very strained.

It was when Rai's family, who was in the midst of preparing for the ceremony, began to hear rumors and criticism voiced by members of Raka's family, the family's eastern wing, that the ties between the families began to unravel.

A drop of indigo will ruin the entire pitcher of milk; such was the effect of the words that found their way to Gusti Ayu Rai. It was an insult, both to her personal honor and to her position as a mother.

She was well aware of the reason, of course: several months previously - prior to the Six-Month ceremony, that is - her son, the father of the child who was to be feted, had been beaten half to death by some people from a neighboring village. Her son, who had lost some money at the gambling table, had borrowed a friend's bike which he then pawned, hoping to use the money to recoup his previous losses.

Instead, he had been roundly defeated. And then, out of fear, perhaps, he had skipped town for a number of days. The owner of the bicycle, who was both angry and upset, had gone looking for him and when he finally found him in the neighboring village, had proceeded to teach him a lesson with his fists. Bystanders had joined in the fray and beat him too.

She knew what it was that Raka's side of the family wanted: What else but to expel Rai's son, whose bad karma, it seemed, was most certainly the cause for the shame he had brought to the family.

The old woman sighed again, "Why isn't there room in tradition for forgiveness? How can they expect me, his own mother, to expel him from the family? Oh, my grandchildren, my poor grandchildren," she moaned. "Why should you have to suffer for your father's actions? If I expel him, then you and your parents, and all of your descendants will be different people, no longer members of my family."

She didn't know what to do. Under customary law, family members who had been expelled from the central family were no longer eligible upon death to have their corpses carried in the funeral procession by members of the original family. Their spirits would not be honored. Their families would not be allowed to partake from the traditional offerings - be they food or drink - that were left over from ritual ceremonies. It didn't matter what kind of ceremony - death, wedding, birthday or whatever. It was not permitted! And should any family member deliberately disregard this injunction, he or she would also be expelled.

Gusti Ayu Rai knew that the talk she had heard was both a reprimand and a warning from the other family. But she paid little heed to such talk. After all, because it was she who controlled the family wealth, she wielded a sizable amount of influence.

She gathered her children, her sons and daughters-in-law, to speak to them: "We must act as one because how one person is judged, whether good or bad, will depend on how close we stick together. I say to hell with those whose only concern is that the twenty-four carat value of our caste is not diminished." Like ripples on the water, the news of this meeting spread quickly to the ears of the eastern family. Knowing this to be an indirect ultimatum, Gusti Ayu Raka immediately called together her own children.

She spoke rapidly: "A split between our family and the western family seems inevitable. It's not a question of the purity of our cut - 'twenty-four carats', as they have sneered - it's the shame they have incurred. The news of their transgression is no longer just a family secret. You know this as well as I. Representatives from other villages and from our satellite families as well have reminded us of this fact. That is our primary concern.

"No matter what we do, it seems that they'll always shun us. As they have given us the cold shoulder before, we now shall do as we please. We may be a poor family, but we'll try our best to adhere to customary law. We've made mistakes, that is true, but the times can be blamed for that. What we're concerned with now is a matter of principle!"

Following this meeting, one of Raka's unmarried sons was sent to his grandmother and told to "clarify" the family's position for her.

The chickens perched on the branches of the trees outside began to crow and flap their wings. Their droppings fell on the old woman's land.

It was well into the night but the old woman continued to pound her mortar. Hard of hearing, she could hardly hear the crowing of the chickens. Making matters worse for her, she hadn't been following orders to get more sleep and to take the quinine tablets that a nurse, a neighbor of hers, had given to her. She'd left them lying on an empty upturned barrel for the ants to eat. That had been the state of affairs ever since that grandchild had come to talk to her.

"We won't accept the remains of the offerings that you send to us," he told her. "But we won't force you to take our side either, Grandmother. The choice is completely up to you."

Tears began to flow from the old woman's eyes and run down the troughs that were formed by the wrinkles of her impassive face. From her chin they fell to her chest and there traced a slow downward path around the curvature of her limp breasts.

"Oh, gods above. Oh, gods above..." she repeated over and over, through the night and into the early morning, stopping only when her iron betel mortar suddenly fell to the floor.

Gusti Ayu Rai watched her six-year old granddaughter as she carefully made her way back to the house with a tray in her hands. The cup of coffee on the tray, which she had prepared for her mother, remained untouched.

"The door to Great-grandma's house is still closed," the young girl reported.

"Isn't she up yet? Well, let's let her be. We won't bother her now."

As the sun rose higher, the people in the compound became busy with their respective tasks. Some were busy making sweets and other ritual foodstuffs; some preparing meat dishes, both skewered satay and chopped lawar; while others were dressing the pig.

It wasn't till around noon that anyone thought of the old woman again. And then, Gusti Ayu Rai, knowing that her mother was fond of pig's fat - a dish her old jaws could easily chew - prepared a plate of it, along with rice and an assortment of vegetables, and carried the tray herself to her mother's.

"Mother, Mother! Wake up. It's noon. It's time to eat."

The old woman didn't open the door.

"Wake up, Mother," Rai called again as she pounded on the door of her mother's house.

Still getting no answer, she beat harder on the door. Where could her mother be?

An eerie feeling settled over her. Taking hold of the door by its latch, Rai began to shake it violently. Hearing the commotion, other family members soon gathered at the door to the old woman's house.

Rai's thirteen-year old son, when seeing that his mother could not open the door to his grandmother's house, hurried off but quickly returned with a chair and a wooden pole, a make-shift lever. Setting the chair down outside the window, he climbed on top of the seat and used the pole to pry open the shutters - a trick he had picked up when learning how to pilfer money from his grandmother's home.

In just a few moments the shutters popped open. Reaching inside he then used the pole to raise the crossbar that secured the door to his grandmother's home from inside. As the crossbar crashed to the floor and the door swung open, Gusti Ayu Rai ran inside to find her mother, lying face up and forever more speechless on the sleeping platform. Her wrinkled legs hung limply over the platform's side. She resembled, for all the world, an aged bird, with broken wings.

--Translated by John H. McGlynn

*Taken from Menagerie IV courtesy of Lontar Foundation